Joe Nilson

With “Cuando despiertes con él”, Joe Nilson steps into the spotlight as a recording artist, transforming decades of songwriting into a deeply personal bachata-pop statement. Blending heartbreak, acceptance, and Dominican amargue, the song pairs his own voice with modern production tools while keeping emotion and storytelling firmly at its core.

1. “Cuando despiertes con él” explores the pain of loving someone who has chosen another person while still holding onto hope. What personal emotions or ideas inspired you to write this story?

I think there is an important nuance in the song: the protagonist is hurt, but he is not waiting for that person to come back. In fact, he imagines the moment when the other person will finally understand what they lost.

There is a line in the song that says, “You’ll wish this were a dream, that when you wake up I’d still be yours, but by then it will be too late.” To me, that line captures the essence of the song. It is about that moment when someone decides to leave, perhaps believing they will find something better, only to discover later the true value of what they left behind. There is pain, yes, but there is also acceptance and closure: you may regret it one day, you may wish you could return to what we had, but by then it will be too late.

2. The song marks an important transition from songwriter to recording artist, with you performing your own composition. What made you feel that this was the right song to introduce your voice as an artist?

It was not specifically “Cuando despiertes con él” that made me decide to become a recording artist. It was the desire to find a new way to share my music.

NL Latin Music has a fairly extensive catalog, with songs in different genres available across several platforms. Over time, however, I realized there was a barrier: many people become predisposed as soon as they learn that a voice was generated with artificial intelligence, and they dismiss the song before giving it a chance to tell its story.

That made me rethink my role within my own music. If those lyrics come from my experiences, my emotions, and my way of looking at relationships and life, I thought perhaps the time had come for them to have my voice as well.

So I decided to give my voice to my feelings and keep artificial intelligence as a tool used only in certain parts of the music production process. “Cuando despiertes con él” became the first song with which I took that step, and for that reason it will always have a special meaning for me.

3. Bachata-pop carries a natural sense of romance and emotional intensity. What attracted you to this style for “Cuando despiertes con él,” and how did you approach creating its overall musical atmosphere?

“Cuando despiertes con él” is a song filled with emotion. Although, for me, the essence of the story is closure – the certainty that by the time that person understands what they lost, it will already be too late – I also understand that every listener can make a song their own and find a different story within it. Someone may hear it and feel that there is still hope for a return.

But there was something that was decisive for me when it came to giving that story its musical identity. In very Dominican terms, “Cuando despiertes con él” is a song of amargue – that feeling where heartbreak, nostalgia, pain, and everything you experience when a relationship leaves a wound all come together.

And if there is one genre in the Dominican Republic that knows how to tell the story of amargue, it is bachata. That is why I felt it was the natural musical language for this song. I wanted the music to carry emotion and melancholy, while still preserving that rhythm and identity that allow a painful story to be both sung and danced to.

4. You wrote both the lyrics and melody yourself. When developing the song, did the story come first, or did the melody and musical idea lead you toward the narrative?

The first thing that came to mind was a very simple idea: “Cuando estés con él” – “When you’re with him.” But I felt I could express it in a more poetic way, and that is how “Cuando despiertes con él” – “When you wake up with him” – was born. That phrase became the starting point from which I began building the entire story.

In this case, I wrote the lyrics first. The melody did not come immediately; several days passed before I finally found one that I felt could convey the essence and emotional weight of the song.

And perhaps it sounds a little contradictory to say this as a songwriter, but I am not a musician: I do not play any instrument. My melodies do not come from guitar strings or piano keys; they come from my head. Some songs have remained stored away for months because, even though the lyrics are finished, I still have not found the melody that I feel belongs to them.

Other times, the exact opposite happens: a melody suddenly appears in my head, and the first thing I do is record a voice memo of myself humming it so I do not lose it. Then the story that will eventually accompany it may emerge later.

For me, songwriting does not follow a fixed formula. Sometimes the words find their melody, and other times the melody is waiting to find its words.

5. The production incorporates instrumentation and arrangement elements developed with the help of AI, while your lead vocals were recorded in the studio. How did you use these tools creatively while maintaining your own artistic identity?

For me, artificial intelligence is an extraordinarily powerful tool because it has given me the opportunity to open a chest where songs had been accumulating for more than thirty years and finally begin bringing them to life. It plays a very important role in my process, but I have never stopped seeing it for what it is: a tool, just like my phone, my computer, or any other technology I use to create.

The process does not begin by asking AI to invent a song for me. I come with the song: its lyrics, its melody, and a rough recording made with my own voice. AI receives that material and gives me its interpretation of what I provided. And for me, that is not where the work ends; that is where another stage of the creative work begins.

From that result, I start making decisions: adding or removing instruments, changing background vocals, looking for more drama in certain moments, modifying elements of the arrangement, or continuing to work until the production gets closer to what I had imagined for the song.

That is why I do not feel that using artificial intelligence dilutes my artistic identity. Technology can help me build the sound, but the story I want to tell, the melody, the emotions, and the decisions about where the song should go still come from me.

6. “Cuando despiertes con él” begins a new chapter for you under NL Latin Music. What can listeners expect from Joe Nilson as an artist, and are there more songs or projects already in the works?

As an artist, I want to continue doing what led me to write songs in the first place: turning feelings and experiences into stories in which other people can recognize themselves. I want to keep telling, through my lyrics and melodies, not only my own experiences but also the stories of people around me, because many times we discover that what we believe is deeply personal is also part of someone else’s story.

The first step has already been taken with “Cuando despiertes con él,” but this is only the beginning. I already have the recording sessions scheduled for the next two songs I plan to release. The first will be “¿Quién será?”, a salsa filled with emotion, longing, and melancholy. After that will come “No negocio mi paz,” a very personal acoustic pop ballad that will show another side of me as a songwriter and performer.

I do not want to limit Joe Nilson to a single musical genre. I want the common thread to be the stories, the emotions, and the honesty with which I can tell them. If a song makes someone listen and think, “I’ve lived that too,” then, for me, the music has fulfilled its purpose.

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